(1808-1885), German painter and Illustrator

Carl Spitzweg was one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier. He created numerous images, oil studies, drawings and watercolours, whose strange, bizarre spun charm has made him the most popular representatives of the bourgeois genre and landscape painting in southern Germany.

Spitzweg was born into a wealthy merchant family in Munich and first successfully completed a scientific study. A disease led him to decide to become a painter. He continued his education and soon found himself connecting with other colleagues from the Munich School painters such as Moritz von Schwind.

Spitzweg is one of the great German painters and draftsmen of the 19th century. His most famous pictures like "The poor poet", the "Bookworm" or the "perpetual suitor" show nerds of bourgeois society, indulge their hobby horses, always lovingly and told with a wink.

He became one of Germany's most popular artists. He chose very small formats and described the character with accurate and precise detail in their respective milieu. So he reached a satirical exaggeration of the types, ranging to the grotesque. In his last work he put more emphasis to spontaneous, sketchy, moving what his landscapes is especially visible.

From the history of art he was only discovered in 1900, all his life he was never as famous as other contemporary painters.

Art and culture in the period from 1815 to approx. 1860, between romanticism and realism in German-speaking countries. The epoch took its name from the weekly "Fliegende Blätter", where the poems by Swabian schoolteacher Gottlieb Biedermaier were regularly published between 1855 and 1857.

The painting of this period was determined by intimate, comfortable motifs. The masters of Biedermeier style were Carl Spitzweg, J. P. Hasenclever, G. F. Kersting among others. Ludwig Richter distinguished himself as an excellent illustrator.

After the German Centennial Exhibition 1906 in Berlin, the term "Biedermeier" established to describe fashion and simple, no-frills but high quality furniture.